The Origin of the American Races. 277 



monuments there indicate the existence of a civilisation established 

 7.000 years. The problem of South Arabia, and the existence of a 

 highly developed Hamitic civilisation there in times extremely remote, 

 before the desiccation of the Peninsula had begun, and while great rivers 

 and inland seas interspersed its now sandy deserts, is too obscure, and 

 too unfamiliar even in outline, for me to venture to say a word upon it. 

 As to Egypt, the most recent researches have left uncertain the question 

 of the original population in prehistoric and early historical times : but 

 various traits have caused the Egyptian, Berber and Cushite languages 

 to be classed together as sub-families of a Hamitic group remotely related 

 to the Semitic ; though as a developed language Egyptian was certainly 

 extensively influenced by the Semitic. There are not wanting, therefore, 

 in works by independent and quite recent writers, facts which more or 

 less strongly confirm the theory put forward by Father Brosse as to the 

 dispersion in times very remote of a Hamitic race who were traders, 

 civilisers, raisers of enormous monuments, and in many respects in ad- 

 vance of other races. I say in times extremely remote : that is of 

 course ; the antiquity of the human race is a matter still to be deter- 

 mined ; no calculation even approximately correct has yet been agreed 

 upon. Most anthropologists seem to proceed upon the assumption of a 

 monogenous origin ; that is to say, the descent of all mankind from two 

 first parents : and the classifications of writers certainly not unduly 

 biblically inclined have preserved the old appellations, Semitic, Hamitic 

 and Japhetic, as descriptive of portion at least of the human race The 

 family of Xoah are therefore still in question, and when we set aside 

 sacred tradition, or seek elsewhere for confirmation, or form conclusions 

 independent of that tradition, we find ourselves groping among the 

 merest vestiges of things that were. Geological changes, climatic 

 changes, changes in the physical distribution of land and sea have taken 

 place, and we can form only the vaguest surmises as to their nature and 

 extent. How. th'ii. can we determine even in the provisional manner 

 the migrations of humanity, much less fix the stocks from which tin- 

 existing races have descended ? It seems a thing impossible ! Yet the 

 mind of man is so constituted that it will not — cannot abandon the 

 problem, and all credit to men who. like Father Brosse, have devoted 

 long years of study, or it may be whole laborious life'imes, to settle here 

 a point, and there a point, which, being firmly established by patient 

 research, may help towards the reconstruction of the elusive past. 



This is not the way Father Brosse states his case. He puts it 

 infinitely higher — too high. 1 may say at once, for me. Probably the 

 fault is mini', but at the present stage of my comprehension of the sub 

 ject, I cannot see justification for identifying as Hamitic empires such 

 as those of Babylon and Egypt as known to us in historical times, when 

 according to all recent authorities they were in the main undoubte<ll\ 

 Semitic or Semitised. Sumerian or other Hamitic elements there may 

 have been, and no doubt were, merged — submerged — in the general popu 

 lation ; but it appears to me that the learned Father is not sufficiently 

 careful to indicate the very partial extent to which the term Hamitic is 



